Baseball legend Jim Abbott talks to young fans last year in MIssion Viejo. Last week, Abbott talked spoke at the Ryan Lemmon Foundation dinner in Irvine. CHAS METIVIER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

All my childhood, as I pored over the sports pages and books memorizing absolutely useless information about my heroes and favorite teams, I'd read about something called the "hot stove league."

I wasn't sure exactly what it was – was it a real league or organization of some kind? But I gathered it involved major league baseball players going to dinners during the off season, eating thick steaks and drinking bourbon and sharing stories and laughs with local men about chasing half-naked hookers down hotel hallways in Cleveland or Baltimore. It sounded magical.

Alas, we didn't get too many big leaguers vacationing in Lompoc, at least not in those days. Now, in my 53rd offseason, I finally went to my first hot stove league dinner. Jim Abbott was speaking last week for the Ryan Lemmon Foundation, which raises money for high school baseball in Orange County. Larry Thomas, Jeff Lalloway and I ended up at Abbott's table at the Strawberry Farms Golf Club restaurant.

Abbott, 45, retired to Newport Beach after his 10-year career ended in 1999. My fascination with Cleveland and Baltimore long abated, my ice-breaker question was focused on the last baseball topic I got worked up over. What did one of the most memorable Angels think about the name-change to "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim?"

"I wish it were the 'California' Angels" he said. "That's what it was when I was here."

I liked that this soft-spoken man didn't think he had to give a politic answer by either agreeing with me and saying "Anaheim Angels," or defending Arte. The constituency for "California Angels," I would guess, is relatively small. Toward the end of the evening, he would show his candor in a way that really surprised me.

Early on, though, he talked to the audience about overcoming the challenge of being born without a right hand and those who helped him. He recalled, for example, how his second-grade teacher in Flint, Mich., had figured out a way that a one-handed boy could tie his own shoes, and then sat down with Jim to teach him the method while the rest of the class watched a film.

His father bought him a plastic mitt from a drugstore – exactly what my father did – and together they figured out how he could catch and throw with the same hand.

You can watch replay after replay of Abbott doing this, but it is still one of the coolest party tricks of all time when performed by its co-inventor.

Abbott called up Lalloway and had the Irvine councilman toss a baseball back and forth with him as he talked us through the mechanics. It is smooth and baffling enough when performed for 60 guys with a ball coming in at a lob. Imagine doing it in a packed stadium with top-spinning comebacker or a liner erupting off a bat at 110 mph.

"If they hit it back hard enough, I duck," he laughed.

Somebody asked him about the worst such experience. While pitching for the Yankees, Abbott said, Frank ("Big Hurt") Thomas of the White Sox sent a ball back to the box so hard Abbott never saw it coming. It had so much velocity that when it caromed off his thigh, it bounded into the Yankee dugout. Thomas ended up on second with an infield double.

The conversation flowed from character, to baseball, and back to character. The last question dealt with both. The topic had been kind of sitting there, pregnant, all evening. Just a few weeks earlier, dopers Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had been denied entry into the Hall of Fame.

A guy asked Abbott: Should they be in the Hall? His reply:

"I played in that era and, you know, I'm OK with consequences. I'm OK with that. I think players during that era, they took some shortcuts. They had an unfair advantage. They made an awful lot of money. They were at the pinnacle of the game. They reaped all those rewards and all that adulation. They knew what the very best of baseball was like. And if the one punishment is not going to the Hall of Fame, I'm OK with that."

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